


but you told me, "if you love me, let it die"

by abyssith



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst and eventual comfort, Book-Canon, Closure, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major TDC Spoilers, Post-TDC, Referenced Death, The Death Cure, This ship will live forever, angst with happy ending, newtmas - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssith/pseuds/abyssith
Summary: "I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t know until you were gone.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Let It Die" by Starset (please listen to it while you read this; it fits Newt's death so well I'm surprised it hasn't been used in a thousand Newtmas edits)  
> DISCLAIMER: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Slight trigger warning. Heavy angst.  
> \--Unbetaed--

The boy that cried

Was the one who tried

He had to fight

The most to survive

He seemed so fine

But he lost his mind

The crank that died

The glue had dried

 

“Great, now we’re all

bloody inspired.”

 

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

 

Nothing but blinding white surrounds him. It’s a manifestation of what feels like raw energy that pulses deep into the very core of his existence, searching the darkest parts of his mind, examining his battle-scarred heart.

It’s the warmth that soothes him. Had it not been for the tranquility of his surroundings, Thomas could’ve very well compared the probing feel poking at his surface to the way WICKED intricately picked apart his soul. 

He’s not exactly sure where he is, however. It feels like a dream and reality mixed into one; too implausible to be real, too vivid to be a vision. He’s aware of his body and his consciousness. He can sense his confusion, his worry, and the curiosity bubbling up in his chest.

The warmth begins to fill him up, and Thomas shivers where he stands. He can feel it washing him out like the way you feel cold water run down your throat— a slow and satisfying process. 

It reminds him of something. 

Something, though, may not be the right word for the way Thomas begins to feel. Rather it’s more of an emotion, a plethora of memories invoked by this warm world of white.

Two sets of memories are brought to the front of his mind.

The first is an incomplete set, a result of Thomas’s refusal to remove the Swipe. But he’s certain that in a past long forgotten, a young boy once sat in front of a flickering fire, confined to a small pile of logs inside a well-tended hearth, snuggled within the arms of his mother.

The second set starkly contrasts with the first, as it is complete, and painfully so. Summoned by the way his heart reacts to the warmth, Thomas’s mind is suddenly hit with the recollection of the way he felt when three of his closest friends disappeared from his life. The way his feeling in his chest was replaced with a chilling numbness. The way the blood drained out of him just like the life drained out of their bodies, the light disappearing from their eyes forever.

When Chuck was impaled.

When Teresa was crushed.

When Newt was shot.

And out of each of those events, Thomas is directly responsible for only one. 

Funny, how the universe decides that it will constantly remind a person of the single most terrible deed he committed and punish him by never letting him forget it.

***

The sky was bathed in a backdrop of gradient periwinkle and navy, edged with pink clouds and marigold lining the horizon. Brenda was beside him, head supported by his shoulder, fingers interlocked. The waves crashed against the shore as a group of young children laughed and danced around in the sea foam, their parents chatting happily on a hill of sand a little ways away. 

His lips quirked upwards as Thomas watched a girl, who could barely pass for six, tackle a boy perhaps a year older. Concern instinctively filled his eyes, but when he quickly reminded himself it was just a game— terrible, terrible past experiences will give a person that sense— his face relaxed as he chuckled to himself. It was just a strange variation of Tag.

“I wonder if I ever played like that.”

Brenda stirred on his shoulder, awakened from a nap sneaking up on her. Thomas hadn’t realized he had said that out loud. “What?” the girl mumbled, straightening up. Her eyes focused on the group of children still splashing around, and she smiled, looking at him affectionately. “Of course you did, Thomas. We’ve all had childhoods. Just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean it never happened.”

Thomas nodded and turned away, only half satisfied. Any other time he would’ve been content beyond words to be observing a sunset as beautiful as that one with his girlfriend, but he felt as if emptiness was chewing at him, gnawing on the edges of his subconscious. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something missing.

Someone was missing.

And though he grieved the loss of those luminous sapphire eyes staring into his own, those white fingers that once clasped his own, it wasn’t Teresa.

Thomas could almost feel the boy sitting beside him, the breeze pulling at long pale hair. He could almost smell a mixture of pine and dirt hanging onto loose white sleeves. He could almost see dark eyes staring right back at him when he turned his head, subtly so Brenda didn’t realize what he was doing.

But of course, it wasn’t real. He was a thousand miles away from Newt, too far to ever properly say goodbye, too far to ever apologize for not realizing how much he had loved him until it was much too late.

***

The warmth is beginning to slip away, and Thomas can feel an unwelcome chill begin to take its place.

It seeps into his hand, and with a start, Thomas can feel the harsh coldness of the metal that had been cradled in his palm, his thumb resting in the curve of the pistol. 

He rears back with a gasp, shaking his hand furiously as if the phantom cold might disappear. But it doesn’t, and he can feel a burning lump begin to collect in his throat. He feels pressure on his biceps like someone is pushing him away, pushing him down.

Thomas grabs his head, fiercely taking fistfuls of hair into his hand, falling to his knees when distant screams afflict the back of his mind. He whispers for it to stop, to go away, but they don’t. Though the volume does not increase, the passion does, and soon Thomas can feel the desolation in the cries as if it is his own. 

Suddenly Newt’s face pulses against his eyelids, and Thomas’s eyes fly open as he shrieks. Though the image is visibly gone as soon as his eyes open, his brain holds onto it, scolding him and forcing him to remember. 

He sees a square-jawed boy with ragged, dirty clumps of tangled hair falling over his distressed face, tears soaking his sunken cheeks and spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed for mercy, for death. Despair as clear as day pierce his eyes as he sobs, his expression forever frozen in one of eternal agony, sanity forever out of question.

Thomas’s heart sinks deeper into that black abyss, pushed down by the increasing horror.

He can still hear the click of the trigger, the scream of metal tearing past metal, the blast as the bullet was ejected from the barrel only to immediately rip into skin waiting just outside.

He can still feel Newt’s hands sharply tensing for a split second on his shoulders, fingers frantic and impulsive, only to immediately loosen and fall limp. 

He can still taste the blood that spattered onto his own face, salty and bitter like his own tears. 

He can still remember the little sigh that had escaped Newt’s chapped lips, barely audible, as he sank to the dusty ground, already gone. 

Thomas wishes he had kept his eyes open. Or maybe he doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore, because Newt’s final look of desperation and betrayal is burned into his memory forever.

Maybe, just maybe, he had forgiven Thomas before he died.

He doesn’t hear himself screaming Newt’s name.

***

Brenda was snoring lightly beside him as she slept. Thomas could barely see her chest rising and falling in the dim moonlight splintering in from the cracks in the wooden shack roof.

He turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, his eyes drifting and following the soft curves of one of the main beams. The construction was sound, considering how quickly the Immunes had thrown up huts while a better living area was built. The criss-crossing rafters of wood and the hints of a night sky peeking through the cracks made Thomas think of Homestead, not to mention the whispers of a few people outside, probably walking down to the beach. It reminded him…it reminded him…

The memory was like a slap in the face.

It reminded him of when someone woke him up in the early hours of the morning, voice soft and face friendly, as he told Thomas to follow him.

Thomas cringed deeply, knowing all at once how bad of an idea it was to think of Homestead. Memories of the Maze, of a place he dared to call home, rested in the back of his mind like a fresh burn. 

Pay it no mind, and you’ll be fine. But if you probe it, touch it, bring it forward to investigate…it will flare up with a wild vengeance and bring you hurt unlike any other.

He got up quietly, not wanting to wake Brenda, and silently slipped outside. 

The minute he was alone and out of earshot, Thomas took in a wild, unstable breath, trying not to give into the sob bubbling up in his throat. When it became clear that he had to get out of the area before the girl heard him, Thomas sprinted away from the shack, running as fast as his legs could take him. 

Grass and trees flew by him as he finally let it out, wailing to the sky. Eventually he crumbled, sinking into the sand, letting the roar of the waves fill his ears.

He sat up, sweaty and covered with grains of sand, and looked up at the full moon. The stream of sorrow and apologies that flowed from his mouth fell on nothing but silent stars and a deafening ocean. 

***

Emotional suffering is just as bad as physical, Thomas soon finds out.

In his final conversation with Newt, filled with biting words and crazed sentiments, Newt had confessed to Thomas that he had attempted to kill himself. And now Thomas is experiencing just that.

When he opens his eyes, still plagued by the lingering terror, he’s no longer surrounded by white. Rather he is somewhere far up, suspended in air. He doesn’t have enough time to let everything sink in before a strange, twisted sense of calm hits him like a sledgehammer. He’s so startled that he loses his grip on whatever he had been holding on to, and then he’s plummeting through the air.

Oddly enough, though his eyes quickly close again, he doesn’t scream.

Not until he hits the ground, and his ankle erupts with a sharp burning feeling, like a million red-hot nails had stabbed into his skin all at once.

The serenity is gone, ripped away to set the stage for a horrifying onslaught of alarm, torment, disappointment, loneliness, and above all: utter desperation. 

He opens his eyes again, and he’s back in his white landscape, but Thomas acknowledges the change of setting with a hazy mind. He’s gone into shock, and his ankle is still roasting over an open fire.

The burning slowly spreads through his body, brutal and wild, and it pools in his gut, his chest, his temples. He’s plagued by a violent migraine, and Thomas curls into a ball, choking as his throat closes up with panic. 

Without warning, a centered spot on his forehead about an inch in diameter explodes with blinding pain, and he momentarily blacks out. Thankfully, the searing needles that punctured his head lasted less than a second. 

The temporary assault on his senses and his feelings bleeds away, leaving Thomas to gasp where he lays, unable to grasp what had happened to him.

However, he knows immediately whose suffering he had just experienced. And he knows why it had stopped so suddenly. A dull throb pulses in his left ankle as well as in his forehead, cementing his theory.  

An untamable outburst of undisguised emotion skewers his heart just as severely as any knife could. This time, Thomas is unable to figure out whether the heartbreak is Newt’s or his own.

***

Everything was black and red. Someone was keening.

Thomas stumbled in the darkness, hands covering his ears as he ran. Maybe he was the one screaming, he didn’t know.

Then he heard Newt.

All your fault, he cried directly into Thomas’s ears. All your bloody fault.

Thomas only raised his voice and shrieked louder, running faster. Voices were both whispering and shouting around him, telling him how much Newt hated him. 

Thomas’s face was on fire, and his cheeks were covered in hot tears. His throat had long gone hoarse, and now it just hurt to scream, but he couldn’t stop. He just wanted these voices out.

Impact slams against his back, and he’s on the ground, knocked down out of nowhere. Newt was on top of him, hair mussed and ripped out in places that oozed blood. Thomas struggled to no avail, thrashing and trying to escape, but the boy held him down. He vaguely registered Newt spitting angry words at him, but his ears refused to make out whatever he was saying— after all, he already knew.

As Thomas stared up at Newt, the other boy took a pause to pant for breath. In that instant, Newt’s face contorted into a younger boy, red around the eyes and nose and still in possession of his baby fat. Thomas barely realized that he was staring into the blank eyes of Chuck until the face changed once again, this time into Teresa. Her eyes were begging him, full of regrets, and a second passed before it was Newt again.

And this Newt was sane, his eyes clear and incredibly aware of what was happening. His skin was still pale, but his hair was restored, face as smooth and unblemished as it was when Thomas first met him. He stared into Newt’s shining eyes, trying to hold onto the fragments lucidity still left in the watery brown orbs. His eyes were the only thing that stayed the same when the rest of Newt’s body deteriorated into the Crank he became, maroon bruises spreading like ink in his cheeks and bleeding wounds splitting over his neck and arms. 

He whispered something that Thomas couldn’t quite make out, something that he never wanted to hear again.

Even though Thomas was never aware of the pistol in his hand, it appeared against Newt’s forehead, Thomas’s finger around the trigger. 

A gunshot rang through the charged air, and the light went out. Newt sank, blood seeping from his head. Thomas let out a bloodcurdling scream, surging upwards, lost in the hurt and the overwhelming bereavement, and then everything disappeared.

 

Brenda was at his shoulder, shaking him and calling his name frantically. Thomas sat up with a jolt, lips parted and tasting of salt. His hair was soaked.

He didn’t hear any of the words that his girlfriend tried to comfort him with until she breathed two words. “Tommy, please…”

It was like someone had flipped a switch inside of him, triggering a blaring alarm throughout his central nervous system. He shoved Brenda away, half out of repulsion for that nickname and half out of a desperate desire to never hear it again. “Don’t call me that,” was all he pleaded, his words emotionless. “Don’t call me that.”

Then he took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. When his voice was steady again, he breathed in a dangerously certain voice, “Everyone calls me Thomas, Brenda. Well, except for Newt. 

“He called me Tommy.”

Brenda didn’t try to console him again after Thomas had told her that, simply giving him a very sad look before turning away and lying down again. She would never get the impact of what he had just uttered. The exact same thing he had told Teresa, except…

The usage of past tense destroyed him.

***

Guilt consumes him as he rocks in a ball. 

Getting nauseous, Thomas slowly crawls to his knees, and clutches his stomach, whimpering with his eyes squeezed shut. He had never hurt this much over Chuck. Cried plenty, beat up enough people, but never felt this torn inside. Teresa just left him numb and depressed, but Brenda had moved in quickly. He rationalizes that numbness as an emptiness in his mind, vacant of memories that would allow him to properly grieve over lost times.

But Newt.

The Glue, they had called him.

It was fitting, that nickname. Because the second that Glue was gone, the second that Glue dried, Thomas fell apart.

He’s a million shattered pieces of the boy he once was. His throat is still thick with emotion, making it hard for him to breathe. Maybe he’s still feeling Newt’s pain, because Thomas can’t remember a time he ever felt this lost or meaningless. Even in the moment that he shot his best friend, he had just felt…

Cold. Lifeless. Dead.

A breeze picks up around him, swelling like a whirlwind, circling him like vengeful vultures. Voices are carried within, whispering.

“Thanks for being my friends. Goodbye.”

“I told you bloody shanks to get lost!”

“I am a Crank!”

The words begin to bounce around in Thomas’s head, the echoes making it sound harsher and more hopeless then ever. He buries his face into his hands, already knowing what he’s going to hear.

“And you, Tommy.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here and asking me to leave with you. A lot of bloody nerve.”

“The sight of you makes me sick.”

His heart clenches and convulses, and Thomas thinks he’s about to throw up, it hurts so damn bad. His stomach lurches, and he doubles over.

“Please leave.”

“So let’s say our bloody goodbyes and then you can promise to remember me from the good old days.”

“Get out of here!”

Thomas looks at his hands, the image a blurry peach-colored spot. What had Newt looked like back in the Glade? How had he sounded? Were they friends? Did they even know each other? 

“Get away.”

The words are getting louder, more bitter. Thomas doesn’t think he can take it.

“Just shut up, you shuck traitor!”

“I hate you! I always hated you!”

“It was all your fault!”

Thomas is sobbing now, loud and wet and disgustingly. It doesn’t matter. No one can hear him. No one would care.

“I hate you, Tommy!”

“I can’t even look at your ugly shuck face!”

“Why’d you come over here? You expected a bloody hug?”

“Kill me, you shuck coward.”

“Put me out of my misery.”

Thomas’s breath hitches, and his head pounds in time with his accelerated heart beat. He can feel his pulse sharp against his palms and forearms pressed against the sides of his face.

“I trusted you!”

“Do it!”

“Kill me!”

“Do it before I become one of them!”

“KILL ME!”

Those same words increase in volume and number, until it sounds like a thousand agonized Newts are shouting the same thing in Thomas’s head. He falls forward, body wracked with powerful tremors, the voices unbearable.

And then it all goes silent with a collective hush, leaving three words, dripping with grief, to reverberate through him and destroy him from the inside out.

“Please, Tommy. Please.”

***

The note weighed him down, making him feel like he was keeping an anvil in his pocket. A constant reminder of what he had done, what he had failed to do, what Newt had wanted. But he knew that he would never leave it behind. He couldn’t. Thomas owed Newt that much— to keep his memory alive. To make amends, just like the Glader had wanted.

Thomas never told Brenda what it said. Same with Minho. But unless he wanted the shame to keep eating him up alive, a monster trapped in his throat and chest, he would have to let someone else share the pain. It was an awful thought, but Thomas didn’t know how much longer he could force himself to be the only one struggling in this world of fresh beginnings and brighter memories.

One night, when Brenda was gone, talking to some new friends after promising to come back soon and tenderly kissing Thomas good-bye, he took it out.

There was hardly enough light in the shack to see exactly what its contents were, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it said. He had read it enough times for the image to form in his head, smudged in the same places where he had clutched the paper too tight with heartache. His fingers traced the letters, just barely visible in the twilight, feeling the slightest of dips in the paper where Newt had scrawled dark letters.

Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me.

His windpipe closed up, and suddenly his lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen. Trembling fingers lost their grip, and the letter floated to the ground, face-up. 

A tear drop splashed onto the crinkled note.

***

He doesn’t know what was worse: those verbal reminders of the past month or the heavy silence that takes its place when the last three words were spoken.

Thomas waits where he is, a wired-up ball of tensed muscles and pent-up passion, ready to blow up again at a moment’s notice.

But nobody speaks. Nothing happens.

Allowing him to wallow in the aftermath of all that had occurred.

Thomas wants to leave.

As for what he wants to leave, he’s not sure of. He wants to wake up and leave this psychological nightmare. He wants to sail away and leave this paradise to somewhere where he won’t have to burden Brenda or Minho or anybody else with his irrational mood swings. He wants to leave it all, wipe his slate clean and erase his name from history. At least then he’ll get some kind of closure. 

“I need you,” Thomas whispers, his head in his hands, his fingers an insufficient barrier for the tears that come. “I need you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I failed you. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t know until you were gone.”

Didn’t know he loved him ’til he let Newt go.

Darkness is creeping up on him, and he sinks into it gladly, not sure what it stands for quite yet. But it’s quiet, it’s peaceful, it’s everything he needs. The grief disappears, the guilt, the pain, all of it.

All he wants is death, and he begins to understand exactly how Newt had felt before he was shot.

All he wants is to trade places with the dead boy, because he deserved life far more than Thomas ever would.

“I want to see you again.”

All Thomas wants is Newt back.

***

He decided to let go of the burden.

And so he told both Minho and Brenda.

Confessed everything.

They had listened in complete silence, their eyes and faces displaying nothing. When Thomas was done, about a minute passed, and no one had said a word. He had been tense the whole time, waiting for Minho to whip out a gun and shoot him just as Thomas had shot Newt, infuriated and unforgiving. Waiting for Brenda to disown him, unwilling to be with a man who killed his best friend.

Then, out of nowhere, Minho had succumbed to tears, lunging forward and trapping Thomas in a suffocating hug. He had returned it after a puzzled few seconds, confused and relieved. The older Glader didn’t let him speak, letting the embrace do all the talking. When Minho finally pulled away, his expression told Thomas everything that he wouldn’t say. That he understood, he was thankful, he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Then Minho had left, still crying softly.

Brenda had taken it much less explosively, which, honestly, Thomas had inwardly expected. The confession was more for Minho, anyway, since the girl had no opportunity to grow nearly as close to Newt as the boys had. But she had offered her consolation and understanding in the form of a warm hug and multiple kisses, none of which Thomas had the strength or willpower to return. He did hug back, though, letting her know that this was a temporary state of mourning and that one day he’ll be okay.

However, Thomas had made a decision to never show them the note. That was the one piece of Newt that would only belong to him.

***

He can sense someone close to him.

Thomas stands up, startled as the darkness abruptly melts away. He looks around, sure he had heard footsteps echoing in this ethereal limbo. 

“Hello?” he whispers, his voice small. “Please, I don’t want to be here anymore. Send me away, kill me, anything. I don’t want this anymore.”

A pacifying feeling floods his veins out of nowhere, and he stills, muscles relaxing, heartbreak alleviating. Invisible fingers seem to brush his neck, and Thomas shudders at the otherworldly sensation, goosebumps popping up where he had felt it.

In an equally quiet voice, but less emotion-driven, he murmurs, “I just want everything to be okay again.”

In his head, he knows that everything technically will be okay again, as far as the world went. He internally knew what the new plan was— wait out the world, wait for everyone with the Flare to eventually die. The Immunes would return to the world decades and decades after Thomas will die, and then try and slowly repopulate the damaged planet with a new generation of humans, free of the Flare.

But for Thomas, who knows that he will die long before any of that sort of talk begins to truly circulate, nothing will be the same again.

The touch returns, but this time, it’s on both of his cheeks, as if the person touching him is standing directly in front of him. A warm wind ruffles through his hair, as if someone is chuckling into his head, running their fingers through the short black strands. Thomas closes his eyes, certain he can feel a gentle palm caressing his jaw, a hand cupping his chin. He half expects the feeling of a kiss pressing against his lips, but it doesn’t come.

The calmness spreads through his body, and more goosebumps spring up on his arms and hands, where unseen hands brush against him and assure him that he is not alone. What’s funny, though, is the callouses he can detect. The fingers feel long, thin, friendly…

Familiar.

***

The note is in Thomas’s hand right now. Gingerly held between both of his palms, his sleeping figure curled around it underneath the blankets, an involuntary but protective position. His head is bowed in his sleep, his lips touching the corner of the paper that peeked out from between his thumbs. 

If Thomas had been awake, he would see Newt standing over him, arms crossed and a warm smile tugging at his thin lips. 

If Thomas had been awake, he would feel Newt pull the blankets a little farther up, tucking it under his chin.

If Thomas had been awake, he would sense Newt resting a single kiss upon his chapped lips before vanishing, just as he had done the night that he had found Thomas in the woods. A kiss that he would never feel, a kiss he would never know ever happened, but a kiss nonetheless.

If Thomas had been awake, he would understand exactly why Newt believed him since the very start, trusted him like none other. Why he wanted Thomas to be the one to end his life.

***

It’s the single word spoken that reaches into him through his ears, flowing through him, making him sway on his feet, vertigo and dizziness roaring through him.

It’s the sanity, the pointed calmness of it, that brings Thomas to tears.

“Tommy.”

Thomas turns around to see Newt, his clean blonde hair combed back, hanging down to his shoulders. A loose white shirt hangs on his shoulders, hood flipped to one side, like it was the day that Thomas first met him. 

And his smile. 

So full of life, of happiness, of affection. And it was undoubtedly for him.

Thomas runs to the Glader, grabbing him and pulling him into a bone-crushing hug, sobbing uncontrollably. It's like his arms are replaced with limbs of steel, ungiving and unwilling to let its hostage go. He feels Newt holding him, too, hands around his neck and his back, fingers fisting into his shirt. Rough lips press against his collar, quivering slightly. He doesn’t realize that he’s placing his own against Newt’s neck until he tastes warm salt, a result of a single tear rolling down the other boy’s jaw.

Thomas knows that Newt isn’t really here, that he’s dead, that this is only a figment of his imagination. 

But maybe it isn’t. 

Life is strange, and so is his head. All the things WICKED had done to his brain could allow a vast array of different things to happen within his consciousness. So who is he to say that this is a dream, when his heart is telling him it’s not?

He can only cry one thing.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Newt, I’m sorry…”

“Hey. Hey, Tommy, stop. It’s okay. Now look me in the eyes,” Newt whispers, rubbing the nape of Thomas’s neck when he finally stops crying a few long seconds later.

The words are spoken with a touch of amusement, such a welcome sound compared to the icy venom spat at him that fateful night and relived just minutes ago, never mind the fact that the last part was word-for-word what he had said to Thomas when he gave him the note. Thomas looks up at Newt, trying to sniff and blink away the tears, to stop looking like a shuck baby. But Newt doesn’t seem to care one bit, and he gazes right at Thomas, his dark eyes full of emotion and life. “You know I’m waiting, Tommy.”

“I know,” Thomas gasps, not getting enough breath. “I know.”

“You know I don’t hate you, Tommy.”

Thomas manages a weak grin, but just dissolves into tears again. “I know.”

“You know I love you, Tommy. I’ve always bloody loved you.”

Thomas can’t do anything but hug Newt again, hoping that he isn’t shivering as much as he thinks he is. “I love you, too,” he whimpers into his shoulder, holding on as tightly as he dares. "I wish I saw that sooner."

"Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for."

Newt gently pushes him away and gives him a wide smile without a hint of the misery he had when he was alive, a clear promise of reconciliation. 

 

That grin sends a wave of reassurance through Thomas, as if he were finding out the world was okay again.

 

And knowing that Newt is here, is well, is happy where he is…

Knowing that Newt is waiting for him…for Tommy…

Thomas is certain that one day, when he comes back home, the home he truly belonged to...

His own world will truly be complete again. 

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> I desperately needed this.  
> First of all, sorry for how extremely late this Newtmas fanfic is; I finished TDC the other night and am still crying (I promise you). I needed this closure for my own sanity, and I trust you guys needed it too.  
> Second of all, I tried super hard on this fic, but that doesn't mean it's without its errors. Please leave feedback in the comments and let me know of any typos/mistakes I missed. I hope it was good enough for ya'll :)  
> Thanks for reading! (And I'm so sorry)


End file.
